For transcripts of previous sessions and a list of future topics,
click
here .

For an article on how to make "business chat" work (based on this experience),
click
here .

Since the chat itself happens at a rapid pace, it's often difficult
to note interesting facts in particular URLs as they appear on-line. Here's
a place to take a more leisurely look. I've rearranged some of the pieces
to try to capture the various threads of discussion (which sometimes get
lost in the rush of live chat).

Please send email with your follow-on questions and comments, and suggestions
for topics we should focus on in future sessions. So long as the volume
of email responses is manageable, I'll post the most pertinent ones here
for all to see.

Heinrich Schwarz -- Richard - that's
right. I am just starting, but I want to write about collaborative virtual
environments. Systems like the one at Chiat-Day which actually never was
used regularly.

Richard Seltzer -- Today, we want to continue our discussion
about the "social web" (social effects of today's Web environment and their
implications for business), and we also want to talk about this Tuesday's
on-line speech at Placeware. I did my talk about the Social Web, using
the Placeware auditorium -- with audio, text, slides, etc. We want to hear
from people who experienced that to get a sense of what worked and what
didn't and what the business potential of such an application is.

Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Noland. Please introduce yourself
and let us know your interests. All -- Did any of you connect to the Placeware
speech on Tuesday?

Heinrich Schwarz -- Sorry, I didn't.
I know about PlaceWare but haven't been connected myself.

Noland -- Hello All, I
am a new Webmaster for Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas

Richard Seltzer -- Noland -- by any chance did you catch the
Social Web speech I did for Lockheed at Oak Ridge in September?

Richard Seltzer -- Welcome JBF and Tracy. Tracy, thanks very
much for all the informative followup messages.

Blair Anderson -- Tracy..
thank you for the URL's in the last transcript..

JBF11235 -- JBF is having
many problems with this Chat page. So much so, I think it best if I take
my leave. Too much else to do.

Richard Seltzer -- Welcome SPW and Zig, we're just getting started.
WE want to focus on social effects on the Web and their business implications
and also want to do a post mortem on last Tuesday's Placeware speech. Did
any of you connect to the Placeware speech or have problems connecting?

Barbara Hartley Seltzer Hi!
I'm Barbara Hartley Seltzer. I have been away from this a long time. The
lingo seems new. I work for an executive outplacement firm and am interested
in all the new technology and how it can help businesses and people.

Phil Grove -- Good afternoon,
I work for DIGITAL and am looking at changing the way our large corporation
uses the web to create realtionships with customers and partners. Hello.

John Watkins -- John Watkins.
I'm director of The Simple Society, a think-tank interested in involving
the grass-roots in our deliberations.

Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Hello
John W. - What is the focus of your think tank ? Are you using the net
to collaborate ?

John Watkins -- Bob, The Simple
Society believes that most of the current solutions to major public problems
are more complicated than they need to be and we're making an effort to
describe a paradigm for dramatic, yet effective, simplification. The net
is an important part of the effort to define and develop models and to
reach the decision-makers who can bring about the requisite changes.

Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Patti and Tom Dadakis. Please introduce
yourselves. We've been talking about the on-line meeting/auditorium application
that Place is demoing at http://www.placeware.com
and
also about Web Rings, another interesting "social web" capability.

Web Rings

Richard Seltzer -- All -- one of the many interesting followup messages
from Tracy Marks (now with the transcript at http://www.samizdat.com/chat59.html)
dealt with "Web Rings".
Are any of you familiar with that approach/business model?

Richard Seltzer -- Tracy, regarding, Web Rings, do you use that
yourself for navigation? Or do you just sign up in hopes of driving some
extra traffic to your sites? And has it made a noticeable difference in
your traffic?

Richard Seltzer -- By the way, Tracy, could you please provide
a quick definition of Web Rings for those who haven't seen such sites and
haven't taken a recent look at last week's transcript?

TracyM -- Hi Richard and all. I'm
struggling with my interface at the moment - the NEW MESSAGES button won't
load...In regard to Web Rings and the similar Internet rail, so far I don't
think they draw a lot of traffic...but the potential is there, particularly
for Net newbies....I find it more useful with Web Rings to explore different
sites through the index page of all sites in a particular web ring, rather
than surf from site to site....

Richard Seltzer -- All -- re: Web Rings. Looks like a categorized
directory with brief descriptions of sites, with the info submitted by
the site owner. They have lots of sites listed. There is no charge for
listing. And because the categories tend to be narrow and user-oriented,
it provides you with an alternative to the Yahoo directory and search engines
for finding particular kinds of information and experiences (since it includes
chat/events as well).

TracyM -- About web rings - there
are at least 20,000 of them. A group of sites organized by theme, such
as antiques or desktop processing or ice skating or apparel. Each site
has a web ring icon which connects it to the index page that lists all
sites in a ring...and to the previous and next site in that particular
ring. So for example, if one wanted to check out a web ring on gourmet
food, one would either surf from gourmet food site to food site, or use
the index page somewhat like a directory to visit the ones that are most
appealing.

Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Tracy,
can you tell us the financial benefit that a WebRing sponsor might realize
?

TracyM -- All I know about web
rings and financial benefit is that http://www.webring.org
is under new management, and unveiling a new setup in January, hopefully
appealing to businesses which are open to being in business web rings.
Once web rings are more well-known (there are at least 300,000 sites in
them now), I think there's a real potential for increasing traffic...and
therefore selling products or services if that's what one is trying to
do. But one has to stand up well to one's own competition...since the competition
is likely to be in the same web ring.

Richard Seltzer -- Heinrich -- I believe that the business model
for the people running the Web Ring site is based on advertising. They
are trying to generate lots of traffic so they can then do the usual advertising
thing. Sites that list themselves in the Web Ring are required to put up
a link to Web Ring. That's hundreds of thousands of links to this

site. Plus, those people for whom this style of surfing feels natural
will probably come back many times. (It's not my style. But I can imagine
people wanting to do it this way.)

Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- I
have a client who is a member of a Texas Web-Ring. If Web-rings develop
into specialized areas I can seen a definite plus to the "community" nature
of the model.

Richard Seltzer -- Yes, Bob, I could imagine either starting
something similar to the Web Ring to support a particular community of
interest, or somehow piggypacking on what Web Ring and Net Train are doing.
(Web Ring gives you the ability to start a new Ring, at no cost.)

TracyM -- By the way, the Internet
rail is also a kind of webring. I'm on both the Press train and Electric
train of the Internet rail, and made different starting pages to my site
for people accessing it via a train...Each train is on a different theme.
Don't remember the rail address, but you can see it at work at one of my
rail starting pages... http://www.windweaver.com/railsearch.htm
You just click on the railroad tracks to go to the next site on the rail...getting
to the index page for a rail however is a little more difficult....

ilene -- how do you view web-rings
as a basis for social interaction, btw?

TracyM -- Ilene - From my limited
experience so far with web rings, I'd imagine that sites on a web ring
could create some kind of chat area or message board in common. There is
an index page for each one so that you can see a list of sites on a web
ring, and go to whatever one you wish, rather than just surf through them
one by one....The webring directory also lists the most popular rings,
those that get the most visitors. It could be interesting to check those
out and see which subjects are generating traffic.

Placeware

Richard Seltzer -- Is there interest in discussing the Placeware
experience? I believe it went extremely well. At least from my perspective
it did. This was an experiment with "talkies" -- chat/speech capability
with audio, not just text. It requires a Pentium -- a fast one -- to do
the audio compression/decompression, so perhaps the audience today is limited.
But long-range, this looks very interesting. Comments welcome...

hduggan -- I tried to join
the Placeware discussion, but ran into serious crashes.

TracyM -- Richard, could you explain
more what Placeware is for those of us who don't know....

Don Shegog -- I think that placeware
definitely has a place in business, but talking business into the necessary
expenditures to make it possible won't be easy.

Richard Seltzer -- With Placeware, you can have up to seven people
on stage and up to 500 in the audience (auditorium). Most of the action
takes place in audio. BUt you also can display PowerPoint slides, and do
white board things, and also do text chat. People in the audience can talk
to others in the same row (audio or text) and can submit questions to the
speaker or can "raise their hands" to be recognized and speak to everyone.

TracyM -- I'd imagine that everyone
using Placeware would need a fast computer...and that the time hasn't come
yet for it to be accessible to all. Real audio and sound choke on 486s....

Richard Seltzer -- From the speaker's perspective, the Placeware
auditorium was like radio. I'm speaking, but can't see my audience. This
is mediated somewhat by the ability of members of the audience to change
the color of the little button that represents each of them in the diagram
of the floor layout. I had them change to green if everything was fine,
yellow if they were confused, and red if they were having trouble. Most
stayed green, so I had to presume that things were going pretty well. It's
very difficult to field questions in the middle of such a speech -- like
on radio you don't want any down time, you want to keep talking. There's
some good capabilities for fielding questions at the end, but we (myself
and volunteers for Web-net) were a bit inexperienced wtih that.

Richard Seltzer -- I'm surprised. Did any of you connect on Tuesday?
We had a pretty good audience and I thought that many intended to come
and talk about the experience from here. One of the limitations of Placeware's
approach is that there is a lot of discussion that happens in the rows
of the audience that the folks on the stage never see or hear and that
(at this point) isn't captured for later viewing. I suspect they'll fix
that over time. But because of that, it would be very valuable to get some
direct feedback.

Heinrich Schwarz -- Richard, but
isn't the ability for private chat among the audience what goes on in traditional
presentations as well, the kind of bonding experience with your neighbor?

TracyM -- Richard - Don't you think
that sound-based conferencing isn't feasible yet....that we're jumping
the gun in trying to do it unless we have a guaranteed audience that has
the right technology....?

Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- As
a presenter, I would definitely want a complete transcript of a Placeware
presentation. Without that how could you evaluate, improve, and prepare
presentations.

phil grove -- Bob - Presenters
never hear the information in the aisles anyways. Doesn't that lead to
information excess?

Richard Seltzer -- Blair -- The audio at Placeware is actually
very good. (At least that was my experience.) They have their own audio
plug-in. I find it difficult to carry on real conversations with Internet
Phone -- fine for one of those family get togethers where there's a crowd
gathered at each PC and the main message is "I'm here. Isn't the great.
And isn't it great to be able to get in touch this way." But the audio
quality at Placeware was quite acceptable. (Keep in mind that I just upgraded
[at considerable pain to my pocketbook] to a Pentium 233.)

Tom Dadakis-- Richard, could
Placeware be used in a classroom or news conference setting or is it a
one to many distribution with some feedback?

Richard Seltzer -- Tom Dadakis --- I believe that Placeware would
be excellent for a press conference. There the company making the announcement
can do its prepared pitch (complete with slides), and then can open the
floor for questions from around the world. That would be a natural (if
you could be sure that your target audience was appropriately equipped.)
One other limitation to keep in mind -- it's a limitation today for all
streaming audio and video -- it won't go through a firewall (unless you
are using a tunnel).

TracyM -- Haven't been there in
a year, but in the help area on AOL, you sit in an auditorium and wait
for the tech representative to call your name. Meanwhile you can chat with
four people, I believe...the one on your left, right, front and back...text-based....wonder
what kind of software is used for this....It's quite appealing.

Richard Seltzer -- Tracy and Bob -- There are definite drawbacks
to audio chat/speeches over the Internet. Mainly the fact that it becomes
extremely difficult to create/edit a transcript. With text chat like this,
everyone's words are captured. With Placeware's, only what is typed can
be captured, but most of what is happening is audio. I think that what
that means is that means is that text and audio fill two different niches.
I see text chat (like this) as great for peers to try to share information
and seek out the truth through active discussion. The audio type meeting
(at least Placeware's style) is better suited for formal presentations.
A "speaker" has a prepared speech in PowerPoint slides and delivers it
in audio, then people in the audience have a chance to ask questions afterward.
But it's more of a speaking from the mountain top, playing expert, rather
than the community learning experience we generate here (and which is highly
dependent on good edited complete transcripts).

Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Information
excess is the norm in today's society. Filtering deficiency is the problem.
I have no qualm about private off topic discussions, but any discussion
related to the topics should be part of the presentation or class. I have
many good experiences from participant input in classes I have given.

TracyM -- With audio, Richard,
couldn't you just tape-record?? Granted, it's a pain to transcribe afterwards....

Blair Anderson -- "audio
quality/Placeware/acceptable. upgraded to a Pentium 233... "
I have been a regular user of IBM's voice chat ver1.20, although there
is a limited number of users "asynch" and "clarity" is a huge advantage
from an acceptance point of view.. but it doesnt multicast.. it did set
the performance standards achievable on
pentium hosts at 100Mhz.. it's even acceptable on a 486/100. Interestingly
IBM dropped support for this product..

Richard Seltzer -- Blair -- It appears that Placeware's plug-in
requires Pentium. But I'd like to hear that confirmed or denied by folks
who tried.

phil grove -- What about
a more integrated voice/text approach. Where the participants park voice
tagged with text so that there is more to work with. It would allow all
to speak "at once" and the listener to pick up the audio snip based on
the text tag.

Software for multi-media live interaction/meetings?

Phil Grove -- Are there other
appraches to full multi-media live interactions or meetings? Do these have
to be scheduled or can the be done "on demand" like a phone call is? I
imagine that there would have to be an organizational or scheduling factor
to get many to participate.

Richard Seltzer -- Phil -- There are lots of possibilities --
from CUSeeMe and Vocaltec's Internet Phone and VDOlive and vivo and Microsoft's
Netmeeting. The technology is there. But it gets very complicated trying
to put the pieces together so everybody attending the proposed meeting
is properly equipped. And it also takes some practice to get used to this
new medium. And there also are quality problems with the audio, unless
everyone has top-of-the-line equipment. It appears that with the latest
applications it is the processor speed, not the line speed that is the
gating factor for quality.

TracyM -- The fall issue of Internet
User reviews conferencing, chat and Virtual Office programs...most of it
available at http://www.zdnet.org. One
"virtual office" with chat conferencing that is recommended is Netopia
Virtual Office at http://www.farallon.com,
that's only $49.95....Not full multimedia though.

Phil -- Yes, Tracy Marks submitted a very informative followup
note that is with the last transcript http://www.samizdat.com/chat59.html
and which has links to several recent articles about what's available today
in the way of chat/forum software.

ilene -- There are many chat clients
on the web; most of them are woefully inefficient. ichat is horrible, but
it gets great reviews.

phil grove -- Ilene - where
is the gap with ichat --- inadequate yet great reviews?

ilene -- The administrator commands
available are inefficient, not enough customization for leaders of chat,
horrible interface, buggy, and can't keep up with fast typists.

TracyM -- The ZDnet article gives
highest rating to Rooms 3.0, which is created by ichat, but apparently
not the same thing....

Blair Anderson -- inadequate
yet great reviews? I found that following threads time
wasting.. and difficult.. breaks any real synergetic dialogue.

ilene -- Rooms is the administration
tool for ichat; ichat is the chat clients

Northern Lights (search)

Blair Anderson -- I have recently
come to appreciate some of the more interesting dissective
methods of establishing relationships to data, especially when searching...
Northern Lights Search Engine does a very intuitive job.. finding matter
of direct interest, but not containing the
keyword I used.. users are directed with pleasure.. to http://nlsearch.com
(another fine Boston startup!) (promoted only because it is in searching
where I find most of my social/commercial networks commence..)

New Zealand and time zones

Richard Seltzer -- Blair -- What time is it now in New Zealand?
Your followup message was an eye-opener.
I didn't realize that with the northern hemisphere changing to standard
time at the same time that the southern switches to daylight savings time
there is one hour a day when you in New Zealand are actually two days ahead
of the rest of the world. Bizarre.

Blair Anderson -- Richard
said... two days ahead of the rest of the world. Bizarre. Yes.. of course,
taking that "logicaly" it either "increases" the contact window with the
rest of the world, or decreases it, depending on where geographicaly the
immediacy of contact is "required".. Hence another "pressure" on the social
orange slice (you made sense of it.. that was a good start )

Firewalls as barrier to doing what you want to do

TracyM -- Richard - you mentioned
firewalls. The Cambridge Center where I teach is installing a firewall
this weekend, and I also start teaching a class on Internet chat and conferencing
next week. I'm finding myself wondering...what chat and conferencing systems
work with a firewall, and which don't....And what about ICQ (which I haven't
yet used but intend to use in the course)....?

Richard Seltzer -- Tracy -- This public domain cgi script --
beautifully customized by Web-net -- works fine through firewalls. But
most of the commercially available chat software is based on IRC chat and
hence has to keep a channel open and hence is normally blocked by firewalls
(unless the folks managing the firewall set up a "relay"). It's likely
that once that firewall is in place your options for chat will be severely
limited, and you definitely won't be able to do any the multimedia versions.

Talk City

ilene -- Richard, can we talk later
about setting up a Talk City room for you? you can transcript, chat, talk
privately, etc...

Ilene -- I just sent richard and sudha information on creating a chat
room at Talk City -- MUCH better! although its a MS IRC server;

Richard Seltzer -- Ilene -- It is a major, major problem trying
to use IRC-based chat -- especially if you want to discuss serious business
topics and during business hours, because you lock out everyone behind
a firewall. What we have here at Web-net works extremely well, with no
need for a client and no firewall problems.

ilene -- but Talk City uses a Java-based chat client also, so
no need for a chat client. and it is SO much easier

ilene -- We have not had anyone who complained they couldn't
get in either with EZTalk or an irc client.

TracyM -- Java-based programs are
also hard on some computers, especially 486s....

ilene -- You can either set up a chat in the Business City Center
or go to http://www.talkcity.com/irc/apply.html
and create your own room. But we can probably get you a host if you use
the #bizcenter room

ilene -- Yes, Tracy, i hate using the java based client on my
Mac; its too slow; but most PC users love it.

TracyM -- Did you give your email
address, Ilene? I might want to talk to you further...If you don't want
to give it publicly, you can email me....

Wrapup

Richard Seltzer -- All -- I can't believe how fast the hour is ending.
And also can't believe we didn't have the web-net folks and placeware folks
here who helped on Tuesday, much less the folks in the audience. At least
a half dozen folks who swore they would be here today for some reason weren't
able to connect. I hope to catch their feedback in followup messages. As
usual, I'll post the transcript in a day or two. Check http://www.samizdat.com/#chat
And please send me email with your followup messages. seltzer@samizdat.com

Richard Seltzer -- All -- Please before you sign off, post your
email and URL addresses so we can keep in touch. (Don't count on the software
to have captured that information). Also please send your suggestions for
future topics. I feel this one is probably worth one more week (I keep
learning about new capabilities, like Web Rings, from you.) Two weeks from
today, I'd like to talk about Bazaars, a new offering from Acunet in Marlboro.
As I understand it, they are about to "give away" store fronts, like Geocities
gives away Web space. I believe it would be free to very small operations
with very little in the way of transactions and that higher volume stores
would pay a small percentage of transactions. And it would be a single
"store space" with a single shopping cart serving many different small
stores.

Followup

Placeware speech/experiment (the announcement)

If you have a Pentium and a sound card, please join me for a test drive
of Placeware's auditorium-style, voice and text meeting software. I'll
be doing a presentation of my "Social Web" speech at their site http://www.placeware.com
on Tuesday, November 4 at 7:30 PM. (This has been arranged by Sudha Jamthe
at Web-net).

As bandwidth becomes less of an issue, today's text-based chat will
eventually be replaced by audio and video versions (just as "talkies" displaced
silent movies). Also, as more people get used to using chat-type capabilities
for real communication (rather than random nonsense), it becomes ever more
important to be able to accommodate and manage large audiences (moving
toward the notion of "Internet stadiums" and "Internet convention centers").

For both these reasons, I'm interested in a startup operation called
Placeware -- http://www.placeware.com
At their demo site, you can have up to seven speakers on stage, and up
to 500 people in the audience. The folks in the audience can talk to others
"seated" in the same row, and can "raise their hands" to be recognized
by the speaker(s) or can submit questions through a moderator. That much
feels very much like a large chat room at AOL. But they also add voice,
and the ability for the speaker to show PowerPoint slides and whiteboard
and "polling".

There are limitations:

You must have a Pentium and a sound card.

You need to download their audio plug-in.

And this won't work through a firewall.

Over time, the vast majority of users will have Pentium or more powerful
processors.

The style of a Placeware event is by design very different from my weekly
text-chat sessions. My chat tends to be a brainstorming session among peers.
Placeware's auditorium is designed more for formal presentations, where
there is a clear distinction between speaker(s) and audience.

Check the Web-net site for details -- http://www.web-net.org
and keep in mind that you'll need to download the plug-in in advance.

Text vs. talkies

> As bandwidth becomes less of an issue, today's text-based chat will
eventually be replaced by audio and video versions (just as "talkies" displaced
silent movies).

I hope not.

I am far more comfortable with text for a content-filled discussion
than spontaneous speech.

(Of course, if the conferencing system supported review and editing
of a speech or video input before submission, I *might* be convinced. If
internet chat becomes just a distributed form of what happens in a meeting
room, then I know I am at a disadvantage there.)

On the other hand, Placeware does sound intriguing and I will check
it out -- thanks!

Placeware speech -- audience reaction

I HAD VERY FEW PROBLEMS: AUDIO WOULD COME AND GO FROM TIME TO TIME,
I BECAME ENGROSSED IN THE AUDITORIUM PROCESS AND FORGOT TO LISTEN TO RICHARD'S
TALK, BUT THAT WAS BECAUSE IT IS NEW TO ME.

ONE ON ONE TALKING WAS CONFUSING BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH RICHARD'S VOICE
WAS A BIT LOWER WHEN I OPENED MY MIKE-I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY
WHEN YOU TALKED.MAYBE IF WHEN YOU OPEN A PRIVATE MIKE IT COULD CUT THE
SPEAKERS MIKE SO WE COULD HAVE A PRIVATE CONVERSATION. I TRIED TO SPEAK
TO RICHARD,BUT HE DIDN'T RESPOND.

THE SLIDES WORKED GREAT!!

WHAT A GREAT IDEA THIS WAS!! HOW MANY PEOPLE ATTENDED?

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT?

GREAT JOB!

SCOTTY

Placeware comments

I may not be able to make the chat tomorrow so I wanted to let you know
about my experiences with the placeware chat.

I could not successfully connect to the WEBNET Auditorium. I tried three
times with Netscape 3 and IE 3 (with the audio client) and each time the
Java program locked up my system to the point that I had to power down
to recover.

I had no problems getting into the Placeware rooms, just WEB-NET.

Although the model is great, I really have my doubts about the reliability
and slowness of Java apps of this kind at the current level of development.

More on Web Rings

I just sent this to Nettrain. Feel free to post it...I also added several
paragraphs at the end, for your benefit....

Out of curiosity about webrings, and a desire to understand more fully
what interests people on the Net, I decided to compile a list of the most
popular web rings of http://www.webring.org's
250,000+ sites....drawing from their lists in each category. The results
were just as discouraging (in regard to the substance of Net surfers interests)
as the popular word lists of Yahoo. Over 50% are sexual-related....Notice
the strong appeal to men, particularly of the top ten webrings.

Here's the "traffic report" for visitors during the last 8 weeks to
each of the top 20 web rings via the webring.org links....

398478 Nudism Web Ring

364937 Asia Model Web Ring

240916 Sung Hi Lee Asian Girls

238971 Big Beautiful Women

237039 S U P E R C A R S

232,387 Global TransGendeRing

205,363 The Babes Ring

158,233 Ring of Erotica

143,302 PALM PILOT Computers

102839 Docmeister's Fitness Babes Webring

100,919 Princess Diana Memorial WebRing

94267 FRINGE OF THE WEB computer hacking, files, programming

86,922 GEN RING Genealogy

84,053 The Anime Ring (animation, cartoon/fantasy art)

59,918 Fine Art Nude Photography

53,259 BDSM (bondage)

49,982 LIVE Web Cams

48,503 DragonWorks Amputee Webring

45,746 Mariah Carey Ring

43,810 The Recipe Ring

ADDENDUM: Apart from the sexually-oriented sites, perhaps we can learn
from some of the topics mentioned above in regard to their relevance to
business on the Net....Consider for example Mama Ragu's site, and how it
combines all sorts of sideline interests (the Italian language, for example)
to draw people...

Given the abundance of personal and personal interest web sites, I wonder
if businesses would do well to be associated with them in some way...or
to link to them as part of some kind of web ring on a comprehensive theme....and
to play up to the personal interests of Net surfers in order to attract
their attention.

Omitting the sexual sites above: consider a music store in the Mariah
Carey webring, and featuring Mariah Carey; any business site or daycare
center (more and more have them) with a web camera as part of the webcam
ring; a kitchen appliance or mail-order food store in the recipe ring;
and any store or service with an ethnic or national focus having a page
onthat culture's genealogy, and being part of the genealogy ring.

The rewards may be small at the moment, but the possibilities are unlimited....

Right now I'm questioning the separation between personal and business
sites. Some of the most popular business sites take a very personal (and
often interactive approach...

....Perhaps people may be drawn to business offerings AFTER their personal
needs and interests are satisfied....

Just my two quarters (since pennies are now given away in stores, I've
decided to not be so dispensable)